What Would James Madison Say?

If James Madison came back to his Wisconsin namesake today -- where the current governor appears to know even less about running state government than he knows about caller I.D. -- he might reclaim his naming rights. 

Now, our venerable fourth president and principal author of the U.S. Constitution was not a die-hard Federalist, in fact helping to organize the first Republican Party.  He advocated a strong union of states, but worked to limit the power of the federal government once that union was created.


But as a delegate to the Continental Congress, Madison was considered a master of coalition building, and after issuing a series of opposing arguments, he went on to draft what became our Constitution's bill of rights.  In his later years, Madison worked to effect a compromise in Virginia to apportion voting districts by population rather than landownership.   That vote failed.

Fast forward a hundred years, and we find another (American) Republican "Fighting Bob" La Follette fighting similar battles against patronage and limits to civil rights.  La Follette broke with the Republicans of the day to form a Progressive faction that championed voter control and consumer rights. He went on to become Wisconsin's governor and senator, and the primary backer of what became known as the Wisconsin Idea, which promoted a direct role for the citizenry in governance (recall, referendum, initatives) and for experts in the development of legislation (Wisconsin Legislative Reference Library). 

Some pundits are trying to portray the current clash in Madison and other state capitals as a battle between "ordinary citizens and organized labor" that "can be stopped and buried in the very place that it was born."  As the president of the American Majority (and you know who you are) put it, "That is the fight -- freedom versus statism, and it is a fight for the heart and soul of this country.  At the end of this struggle, America will either continue down a path of destructive statism, or return to the ideals of free enterprise and limited government, and by so doing, rise to even greater heights of freedom and prosperity." 

Fiscal sanity and limited government -- those are the essential issues, according to Koch (1-800-kid-agov) Industries, Inc.'s Dr. Richard Fink.  Dr. Fink asks and then tells us what politicians should be doing to stop bankrupting the country by overspending and over-regulating, claiming "these are heavy burdens we can no longer bear."  

You don't have to explain that burden to our nation's policemen, firefighters, and teachers, Dr. Fink.  What they and most thinking Americans want is better, not smaller government -- and leaders like James Madison and Robert La Follette, who know how to shoulder and share our common burden with the American people.